So that’s it then. The popular press and political consensus following Nuala O’Loan’s Report is as follows: a small group of RUC Special Branch officers went overboard when running their informers in one small area in north Belfast.

What now for the neo-cons? What now for the war on terror? Has any US president - apart from Richard Milhous Nixon when he received his impeachment documentation - been handed a report quite like the Baker Report George Bush got on Wednesday?